On Bended Knee
by Lily Zen
Summary: AU. No Season Three. Tess returned to Antar with the newborn prince, and the Antarian Resistance got a hold of him. They returned him to the earth until he was old enough to rule. Canon couples. OCs. Het.
1. Prologue

On Bended Knee

Prologue

Fandom: Roswell

Pairing: Unknown

Rating: Unknown

Warnings: Unknown

Archive: Ask Me

Author: Lily Zen

Notes: This is based on the TV series Roswell, owned by the WB and UPN and whoever else holds the rights, but is almost entirely based on original characters. It operates under the premise that Tess never returned to Earth in Season Three with the baby.

Disclaimer: Not mine.

* * *

Seventy Earth-years ago, a ship crash-landed in Roswell, New Mexico containing the four members of the Royal Antarian family: King Zan, his wife, Queen Ava, his second in command and General of the Antarian Army, Rath, and the king's sister, his second's betrothed, Princess Vilondra. There were two sets of these human-alien hybrids, though one of them was slightly more defective than the other.

Sadly, the defective set was abandoned by their guardian in New York City, who then went on to build a successful life and career in the movie industry on Earth. A blatant shirking of duties, no doubt, and had we known, had we been able to contact them, we would have rectified the matter immediately. Defective or not, they were still clones of the Royal Four and thus needed to be treated with respect.

But that is truly neither here nor there because the True King Zan, a hybrid who called himself Max, was the real concern. Certainly a back-up plan would have been nice, especially after he decided to completely abandon his people several galaxies away in favor of his human life, his human love, one Liz Parker.

However, the once-queen Ava, who called herself Tess in her new incarnation, fulfilled the pact and returned to Antar pregnant with Zan's royal heir. She had fulfilled only half of the bargain that the shapeshifter known as Nasedo struck with Khivar and his totalitarian regime. Not only was she supposed to return with an heir, she was also to deliver the rest of the royal family to Khivar, who would have made an example of them once more. Well, perhaps he would have kept the infamous Vilondra for himself, perhaps not.

There is a word that humans use to describe being like Khivar, beings able only to think of themselves, their wants and needs and goals; beings who can fool others into believing that they feel more than they truly do. It is a term called 'sociopath.' Any emotions, any thoughts that Khivar has are only motivated to benefit Khivar, even his supposed love for the Princess Vilondra. She was a thing to him, a possession or tool, a means to an end.

In any case, since the clone called Tess did not own up to the full terms of the agreement, she was imprisoned. If she had failed to fulfill them at all, she would have been executed. Frankly, the execution would have been a mercy. Khivar's dungeon was a truly horrible place to be. However, her son was taken from her, adopted into Khivar's own house. His plan was to raise the young baby as his own and put him on the throne as a figurehead in order to restore balance to the five worlds.

But everybody knew this was a crock, at least those Antarians who recognized Khivar for the manipulative bastard that he was. Khivar's real aim was to create a child with the original royal bloodline—his hope was that this would pacify those of his people in the star system that still opposed him and wished for the return of the true royal family to the throne-one that would be biddable to Khivar's will, malleable, and essentially the child would be Khivar's puppet-king.

Those of us, those few fighters still actively opposing Khivar's rule, knew that at all costs Khivar's actions needed to be stopped in their tracks. Thus a plan was devised to acquire the infant, ensconced safely away in the heavily guarded palace, and return him to earth.

Of course, even in devising that plan there was conflict. Many of the resistance wanted to use the child as leverage themselves to drum up enough support for a revolution, to overthrow Khivar once and for all and return the throne to the true royal family. The fatal flaw in the plan being, of course, that the only member of the royal family within their reach was that of the infant prince, Zan (the son of the former King Zan), and despite how desperate they were for a leader, a baby could not be coroneted as king. Someone would have to be elected to rule in proxy until the boy came of age.

The natural choice would have been the baby's mother, Tess, but she was a weak hybrid and after the news of her betrayal of the rest of the royals came to light, she was immediately discarded as a candidate. The Antarians had enough of one usurper; the last thing they wanted was to put another traitor in charge of their world.

Fierce arguments erupted over whether to keep the child on Antar and assign a proxy ruler; even fiercer fights occurred over suitable candidates for proxy rulers. The boy had no family left on Antar save his traitor mother, which meant a guardian would have to be selected.

In the end, it was the Shadow Guild that settled it, as they often did amongst the other members of the resistance, whispering suggestions and subtly persuading others to their point of view.

During the time of King Zan and his father, the former king's rule (and many kings before then), the Shadow Guild had been an invaluable resource. No one knew who they were, no one knew if they even truly existed—if anything at all was spoken of the Shadow Guild it was only in jest.

The Shadow Guild, if it could even be classified as a guild, was a very well-kept secret, a network of spies in the court and around the five planets. The leader of the Guild was referred to the Spymaster and answered only to the king himself, would have been equal in status to the highest ranking commander of the armed forces, Rath, had an official rank been allowed and acknowledged.

As the organization was not even supposed to exist, such things were not possible.

The Guild was the greatest source of information for the king on the political status of the realm, and during the former king's reign, he utilized its capabilities to the fullest extent he was able to. That was what had precipitated King Zan the First's rule to climb towards a golden age of peace and prosperity. However, Zan the First suffered a tragic and untimely death, and his son, Zan the Second took over, probably before he was truly ready for such a great responsibility.

Public opinion on Zan the Second's reign differed greatly. Most felt he was too young to rule, too inexperienced, too idealistic. He pushed for changes in the government, in society, and perhaps he asked his people to bend too far too fast. Zan the Second had a vision for his world, for his people, of a world where the women would be given more rights, more freedom, more opportunities, of a government that would give free and equal voice to everyone, not just the noble houses (who were expected to speak on behalf of the people that lived on their lands and in their territories, but were sometimes more interested in personal gain than the welfare of their plebian tenants). He was a controversial man and had as many followers as he did opposition.

The golden age that Antar had been on the cusp of achieving was shattered by the civil war that began to brew.

The Guild worked overtime during this period, collecting as much information as they could on behalf of King Zan the Second. Some sat in pubs listening to the grumbles and mutterings of commoners, others went to noble houses—parties, masquerades, and the like—to gather opinions from the high ranking officials. They were everywhere and nowhere at once. A member could be sitting right next to you on a bar stool or smiling flirtatiously at a courtier, dangling on his arm at one of the great balls, catching what snippets they could.

These snippets were then reported to their contact within the Guild, who then went to their contact, who then went to their contact. Eventually it would reach the trusted few, those who were given the most responsibility in the Guild, the ones that knew the most about how the organization operated and were privy to a great many more secrets than the others, and one of those handful of men and women would go to the Spymaster, whom not even the trusted few actually knew was the King's Spymaster, and the Spymaster would then compile all of the data and present it to the King discreetly.

Only two people in the entire empire knew the true identity of the Spymaster: the King himself and his second in command, Rath.

Zan the Second was not as great at heeding the advice of his counselors and the Guild as his predecessor had been. He was young, vain, and prideful, and less inclined to ask for assistance. When he was informed of his sister Vilondra's betrayal, he refused to believe it, dismissed the Spymaster from his presence with a curt word and stated that he needed to think about things, to process.

Vilondra opened the gates to the city that night and the time for thinking was over.

The slaughter that followed was massive and the losses included a great many of the nobles that swore fealty to Zan the Second and refused to recant on their loyalty, plebeians who were merely in the way of the army stampeding towards the palace gate, and the entire royal family, including the poor duped princess Vilondra. Most of the Guild, shadowy folk and overlooked as they usually were, managed to escape the city through ancient aqueducts and hidden passages and the ancient catacombs that lay buried deep underneath the capital. Some, of course, were killed; some were captured; some changed allegiance at the drop of hat.

However, the Spymaster and forty-seven of her Guild, which had once numbered in the hundreds, escaped with the queen dowager, and rendezvoused off-planet on the far edge of the five planets that made up the broken Antarian Alliance. They licked their wounds and gathered other survivors; people who refused to live under the oppressive thumb of the usurper, and thus began to form the largest organized resistance to Khivar's regime.

It was there they decided that the only way to perform a proper coup on Khivar was if they had a legitimate claim to the throne, and so it was decided that they would clone the former royal family, King Zan the Second, Queen Ava, Princess Vilondra, and General Rath. But it was too dangerous for them to grow and live as children in their war-torn world, so the few remaining scientists and inventors loyal to the cause sought throughout the universes for a new planet, one that was habitated, civilized, and could sustain life. Some place where they could hide the Royal Four until they were of-age to return to Antar and save them all.

Their destination was Earth, but they knew that they had to make the Royal Four human enough to survive on that world. Antarians looked too dramatically different from humans to ever be able to blend in there, and though Antarians could shapeshift in order to temporarily alter their physical forms, their internal structures remained too alien. Geneticists worked around the clock to discover a way to merge the human body with that of Antarian physiology, creating a hybrid that was totally human on the outside right down to the organs, but possessed the cellular and mental capabilities of the Antari.

These engineered hybrids were then sent to Earth while the Spymaster stayed behind and, with the assistance of a few other passionate and loyal Antari, ran the resistance effort until the day that their King would return and set them free from the tyranny.

The Spymaster, during one of their more risky guerrilla attacks, was captured and publicly executed approximately twenty-five Earth-years after the coup. One by one, the numbers of the resistance were chipped away at. Some defected, some surrendered, others were killed. The dowager queen herself died in her lonely cot in one of the resistance movement's underground hideaways. Hope was dwindling, a candle that flickered erratically, ready to gutter out at the fight sign of a stiff breeze.

Then Tess returned with the baby, Zan the Third, and a new chance was practically handed to the resistance on a silver platter. Recognizing that the child would need guardians on the Earth (more diligent than those they had sent with the original four), the remaining scientists created three new hybrids and installed their gestation pods on the ship they would use to send them to Earth.

The first protector they decided on was Naxon, who had been a great warrior in his former life, one of Rath's Generals, a brilliant tactician and fiercely loyal to the true royal family. He had been killed in the tenth year of the resistance, his genetic material preserved in the DNA-bank for just such an emergency.

Next was Hadara, a beautiful courtesan who had been one of the trusted few in the Guild, privileged enough to meet with the Spymaster herself. Physically, she was not very powerful (before Zan the Second, women had not been permitted to learn how to use their abilities to fight; they were expected to be docile creatures and only learn the gentler arts, those that dealt with the mind and heart and healing; his decree that all females should be trained to be combat ready at least with their gifts had met with great displeasure from the more conservative houses) but over the years Hadara had learned a modicum of defensive and offensive magics, which she added to her repertoire of subtle manipulation and a silver tongue. She had become a key figure in the resistance as a double agent until a meeting with a client had gone awry and he killed her in a fit of passionate rage.

Finally, it was decided that the last protector sent to earth would be Rhialla, the daughter of the disgraced House of Viegon. During her life, Rhia (as she preferred to be called) had lived a very public life of infamy. She was the younger sibling of the General Rath and it was a subject of embarrassment to her family that Rhia, like her older brother, had a tempestuous nature that often led her towards mischief and rebellion as a child. She baldly refused to conform to the societal standards, refusing all offers of betrothal, running amuck with commoners and criminal elements, and developing a reputation early on for being quite precocious.

As a teenager, it was not uncommon to see Rhia hanging around the practice field as her brother trained, peppering the men with questions and flattery alike, cajoling them into giving her private lessons on whatever it was they were learning. If Rath and Rhia had been any other brother and sister, perhaps he might have felt overprotective of the way his peers eyed his younger sibling. However, there were quite a few years of age between them and emotionally they were not particularly close to one another. The General had been out of his parents' home as soon as he was able; Rhia was a mere five years old when he'd moved into the barracks. However, Rath indulged Rhia because he knew that the more she hung around the practice fields, the less she was off in the city causing trouble, therefore the less his parents complained about his sister to him.

Then one day that had all seemed to change and Rhia settled into the life of a courtier, a proper daughter of the noble houses, attending parties, wearing gowns, flirting gracefully. Oh, she was still mischievous, but it took on a certain charm. There was just something about her naughty smile that invited people to be in on the joke.

Little did they know and this was about the time that Rhia was approached to be King Zan the Second's Spymaster. Finally, the girl had an outlet to direct all of her energy towards, a purpose in the world aside from marrying well and breeding, and she took to it with great enthusiasm, surviving the coup and leading the resistance for twenty-five years until her execution.

Finally there was Jiuro, a young nobleman who had eschewed the comfort of his family's manse in order to join the army. He never ranked very high, only a Captain, but that had never bothered him much because he also moonlighted in the Shadow Guild. He was one of those that had managed to escape the capital city as fires took parts of the city and blood ran down the gutters to swirl into the underground drains, hurrying past the groups of rioters tearing down statues of the old royal family, turning his eyes away from the murder and mayhem. His loyalty to the resistance had not faltered in all the years since then, and after seventy Earth-years, he was a veteran to the cause. It was decided that Jiuro would pilot the ship and care for Zan the Third and the hybrids as they hatched.

With the four guardians selected, at great risk to themselves, the remaining members of the resistance stormed the usurper's palace and stole the infant prince. Many died in the process, but the ship was secured, the pods were in place, and Jiuro was loaded on with the infant-prince.

Tess, the traitor clone of the former queen, was left to rot in Khivar's prison, childless and alone with no one to blame but herself.

Thus began the last chance, the last hope for change among the chaotic civil war that had been going on for far too long.

* * *

The pods began to hatch while the ship was still flying through space (it does take quite a bit of time to travel to another universe, alien technology or no) and the aging Antari, Jiuro, suddenly found himself with not just Zan the Third, but also a boy who appeared to be about six years old. He had a shock of blond hair that would darken as he grew older and an angular face which would one day become chiseled and handsome with a square shaped jaw and cold blue-gray eyes. His eyebrows were straight slashes over them and even at the approximate age of six he had the posture of one who was self-assured and in control. Naxon had always been of regal bearing.

He virtually towered over Zan, who at the time was a mere three years old. Despite the roundness of his baby face, you could see that he had his father's dark hair, and his mother's pale skin and blue eyes that might change to brown over time. From what Jiuro knew of human bodies, he appeared to have inherited more of his mother's refined features than his father's.

Hadara hatched another year after that. She was smaller than most six year old girls, and Jiuro knew from the human DNA that they had used to create her that she would be lushly curved with generous breasts and invitingly rounded hips. Her human donor had been a woman of Indian descent with caramel colored skin, startlingly green eyes, and wavy brunette hair. However, at six she was just skinny and dark, with short wavy hair, and she laughed far too easily.

At the time, Zan was four and was beginning to look more like his father in build, and in his self-contained posture, and he was introverted when compared to Hadara and Naxon, who laughed often and played practical jokes on each other (Zan was their favorite target as he was physically younger, therefore smaller and slower) as they zipped through space together.

Rhialla, the last of the hybrids to have been created, was also the last to hatch. A year after Hadara, the reborn Spymaster and sister to Rath, pushed her way from her gelatinous womb and fell out into the world, such as it was out there in space, as a pale, skinny six year old girl with short hair the color of India ink. From the blueprints, Jiuro knew that she would grow to be marginally tall for a human woman and slender, corded with the sinewy muscles of her dancer donor, a pretty diamond-shaped face with high cheekbones, gray almond-shaped eyes, and a full, pouty lower lip with an upper lip that was slightly less voluminous. She still insisted that everyone call her Rhia.

Zan was only a year younger than the six year old Rhia, and thanks to his mother's genetics added to the rugged good looks of his human hybrid father, Zan the Second (or as the disgraced clone-queen Tess called him, Max), he was beginning to look like a more refined version of his father with high cheekbones and a strong jaw in an oval face. Jiuro found it interesting how his father and mother's genetic material had combined to form such a cohesive union. He'd seen images of the disgraced former queen and she was small with a heart-shaped face and pointed chin; Max, he assumed, had balanced out Tess' delicate female curves with the angularity of his own features. The only thing that remained the same were those bright blue eyes. When they finally arrived on Earth the children were aged six, seven, eight, and nine, with Zan being the youngest and Naxon the eldest, and Jiuro was finally able to classify the blue of Zan's eyes as the color of the Mediterranean Sea.

He hid the ship in the Siberian tundra, using his ability to bury it under mounds of snow and ice until it was indistinguishable from the rest of the frozen wasteland, marking it only by latitude and longitude in his head and the telltale silver handprint that would burn with its blue glow no matter how much ice was packed on top of it. Then Jiuro, with his considerable skill, shifted into an older looking human male with gray hair and a well-trimmed beard, and led his priceling and the three guardians on a long, cold march to civilization.

It was the start of a journey. A perilous one fraught with assassination attempts, a frantic search for their long-lost king, and the raising and training of four hybrid children.

The last in and of itself was a Herculean task, especially for a man who'd never been anything but a bachelor.

* * *

TBC…


	2. Chapter 1

On Bended Knee

Chapter One

Fandom: Roswell

Pairing: Unknown

Rating: Unknown

Warnings: Character Death

Archive: Ask Me

Author: Lily Zen

Notes: This is based on the TV series Roswell, owned by the WB and UPN and whoever else holds the rights, but is almost entirely based on original characters. It operates under the premise that Tess never returned to Earth in Season Three with the baby.

Disclaimer: Not mine.

* * *

_Ten Years Later_

_Chicago, Illinois_

_2017 A.D._

They liked the bigger cities. It was easier to get lost, to blend in; easier to slide under the radar.

Jiuro had spent many years studying human culture and was an expert at blending in, pretending to be the doting father, a widower, in public. Naxon, who was now called Nathan or Nate, was listed as being Jiuro's (whose human alias was Jared Williams) biological son, while Hadara had kept her name and was listed as the daughter Jared and his late wife (who did not and had never existed) adopted. Rhia and Zan (whose name was changed to Zane) were raised as siblings, Jared's step-children by way is his non-existent late wife. After all, they were both dark-haired with light skin tones. That was enough to declare a family resemblance, though Rhia was black-haired and Zane was a brunette.

Jiuro had to admit that he had settled into a life of human domesticity rather well. After what seemed like a lifetime of war the petty squabbles that he witnessed on Earth were like a balm to his shattered nerves. They meant nothing. These people, this simple, unevolved race had yet to see what true devastation was. Certainly, the body count had been high in their World Wars, in Vietnam, in the Afghan Wars, but imagine that devastation, then multiply it by five planets just as densely populated and a seventy-year long war that was still on-going.

Jared Williams had a normal job as a financial advisor, a non-descript home just outside the city surrounded by a privacy fence despite the fact that their yard was almost an entire acre, and four beautiful children who made him proud and exasperated in equal amounts.

Nathan was nineteen years old and had declined college despite the fact that Jared said he would happily pay for it. Instead the muscular young man with his thick sandy-blonde hair and perpetual tan preferred to do odd jobs such as roofing and construction. In his free time he learned various forms of self-defense and studied up on, surprise, war tactics and philosophy. Rebirth hadn't changed his basic personality all that much and he took his duties as Zane's guardian very seriously, considering himself the commanding officer of their little rag-tag group of hybrids.

Hadara was eighteen and designed her own clothes, which she sold at a small co-op, in between working as a barista at a franchised coffee shop. She was just as small and sensual looking as her blueprint had said she would be, exotic. Though she too was concerned with her physical health (at Jiuro's paranoid insistence) and kept herself healthy by jogging, and doing yoga and tai chi. Among the others, she was closest to Rhia, though that was no surprise. Even in their previous life the two of them had been good friends.

However, Rhia was the virtual opposite of Hadara. Freed from the gilded cage of noble life on Antar, her wildness was left to grow unchecked. Of all the guardians, she was the most rebellious, the most difficult, and Jiuro, who had no prior parenting experience, was unsure how to handle such a girl. Rhia partied and flirted; she pierced and tattooed herself; she liked danger, excitement, noise. At seventeen, she was a virtual nightmare. At least three times a week, sometimes more, James received calls from the school that Rhia had missed class, and at least once a month she came home battered and bruised, reeking of bar smoke and other things, an exultant smile on her face.

Then there was Zane. To those who'd known his father, it did not come as a great surprise that he was intelligent. Even at sixteen, he was in advanced placement classes and on the fast track to be a well-rounded man. He was kind and funny and human girls flocked to him because of his good looks and sweet personality, though he also had a side of him that was full of dark humor and teasing remarks. There was a seriousness in him though and it weighed on his shoulders, making him stand up straighter to bear the pressure of it: the knowledge that one day he would have to return home and reclaim his throne. Perhaps that made him a little more mature than his peers; perhaps it made him seem a little distant despite his warm smile and limpid eyes. But that was alright to Jiuro's way of thinking. He was going to be a king; he should know what a weight that entailed.

Ten years had passed since Jiuro had buried the ship in the tundra. He'd had ten years in which he could have hunted down the royal family, could have returned the heir to his father, the one who called himself Max. Yet Jiuro hadn't been able to bring himself to do so.

Sometimes he wondered why.

Was he too attached to the children? Was he too selfish to let them go? Or was he selfish enough that he didn't wish to return to Antar? Sometimes he thought it was because he was leery of the hybrid king Max. He had, after all, abandoned his people even after he had discovered his destiny. According to the traitor queen Tess, he hadn't wanted to leave Earth and his human lover. If that was true, then wouldn't Max simply keep Zane bound to the Earth?

Late at night, Jiuro wondered those things and wrote them carefully in a log book. He never went back, he never re-read his entries, but sometimes it helped just to get it all out on paper. After all, he was supposed to be the guardian here. He had to present a strong front for the warrior-children he was raising. Someday, he vowed, he would take them home. Just not yet. They weren't ready just quite yet.

Jared Williams quietly powered down his laptop and slid it into his briefcase as he stood up. Maybe once he'd been a looker with a strong jaw and classic features, but now he looked older, drawn out. His white and gray hair was cut neatly, only an inch or two from end to scalp, and his gray beard was kept neatly trimmed. He still cut quite a handsome silhouette in his gray suit and blue dress shirt, his charcoal tie knotted suavely and pinned in place.

His secretary, Gladys, found him to be incredibly good-looking in a Sean Connery sort of way. He'd had to look up who Sean Connery was before he fully understood the reference, then it became obvious when she would glance at him for long periods of time that the middle-aged woman found his form to be attractive.

With an efficient hand gesture, Jared turned off the last remaining lights in the office and locked the doors, setting the alarm with the fob on his key ring. As he headed out of the office building, taking the elevator to the parking structure, he wondered what new surprises would be waiting for him at home tonight. Would it be another call from the school about Rhia's absences? Her lackluster grades? Perhaps she and Nate would be sparring again in the living room, resulting in yet another smashed coffee table. Of course, Hadara would probably be using the kitchen table as her design center once again, and Zane would be torn between wanting to join his guardians in their alien-like entertainments and going out with his normal friends.

Preoccupied, Jared Williams did not notice a slender figure detach itself from the walkway the next row over. The person made no sound, no breath nor footsteps. They were but a shadow.

Jared hit the button on his keys to unlock the doors to his vehicle, and he leaned down to put his briefcase inside. He was straightening when he felt it—the presence at his back and the tingle of alien magic. A hand laid itself between his shoulder blades over his suit jacket, and a sibilant voice hissed, "Where is he?"

Swallowing convulsively, Jiuro prepared to draw on his power, knowing that it was already a lost cause. "Who?" he responded to stall for more time.

"…No matter. If you are here, they will be close by."

He had one chance to gather all of his strength and send a warning to the child he knew would hear him the easiest. With all his might, all his power, fueled by desperation and despair, Jiuro reached out with his mind and screamed one thing.

*RUN!*

Even as he sent it, he felt the cold burn of the hostile alien's power scorch him from the inside out. The pain was so overwhelming; Jiuro could not help but feel the shockwave of it reverberate down his psychic line. He had a moment to think *love* and the faces of his children, his charges flashed through his mind. Then the icy fire of death reached his brain and obliterated him.

Jiuro, who had survived a coup and seventy years of war, had flown to another planet and raised four hybrids by his lonesome, who had once been the son of a noble house, a proud member of the Antarian Army and the resistance movement, crumbled to the ground in nothing but a heap of black ash.

The silhouetted creature calmly locked the open door of the vehicle and walked away. Eventually, the hybrid-prince would be found and then dragged back to Antar kicking and screaming to be executed. It would be the end of the true royal line and finally a new era could be born.

* * *

*RUN!*

Hadara woke with a shock, all her limbs jerking and flailing simultaneously as she fell off the couch. She felt hollowed out with the fear and desperation that had accompanied the single-worded scream, her bones ached with the echoes of a pain that wasn't hers.

In a tumbled heap on the ground, wedged between the over-stuffed taupe couch and the glass-centered coffee table, she pushed her wavy brown hair out of her face and looked around with wide eyes.

Using her mind, Hadara gently tried to retrace the point of origin of the scream, though she knew instinctively who it was, except where there should have been Jiuro there was only void, nothingness. A blank space where the man who had raised her had once existed.

With one hand on the couch cushion and the other on the coffee table, Hadara tried to push herself up off the floor. She made it to a sitting position before she burst into tears, loud, hysterical cries tearing their way out of her throat in between a wordless scream. She buried her fingers in her hair and pulled. Fitting since she felt like she was being pulled apart on the inside as well.

Her hysterics must have alerted the other members of the household and soon there were footsteps pounding down the carpeted stairs. "Dara? Dara!" It was Nate, of course. His room was closest to the stairs and his long legs allowed him to fly down them two steps at a time. Zane followed on his heels, the sound of his footsteps lighter, more frantic as he took the steps one at a time and hurried to catch up.

Nate reached Hadara first and crouched in front of her, large, calloused hands grasping her shoulders with surprising gentleness. "Hadara, what is it?" he tried asking, but when Hadara opened her mouth to answer all that came out was a choked sob and some sort of mucus-filled gurgle. Seeing that the dark-skinned girl was too distraught to answer, he yanked her forwards into the shelter of his muscular arms and she buried her face in his plain gray t-shirt, inhaling the smell of fabric softener and the warm, earthy smell of his deodorant, and underneath that, the scent of Nathan—sunshine and cut wood. Hadara clutched him near her, manicured nails bunching the fabric of his shirt over his back as she let the gray cotton soak up her sorrow.

Behind her, she felt Zane kneel. His touch was a little more tentative, his long, artist's fingers sweeping her hair to the side as he reached to clasp her shoulder. When her tears showed no signs of abating, he ran his hand up and down her spine over her magenta sweater and met Nathan's worried eyes with his own over her head.

It was a good ten minutes before Hadara had it together enough to move away, just enough to whisper in her grief-stricken voice, "Jiuro is dead. Someone has killed Jiuro."

The news dropped with all the effectiveness of a bomb and the quiet aftermath was more complete, more devastating than Hiroshima.

Nathan's throat closed up, his body stiffened in denial. He was about to open his mouth to say that it wasn't possible, it couldn't be true. Then he took a look at Hadara's beautiful countenance, ravaged by tears and snot (which she wiped on her sleeve almost absently; Nate knew that was completely uncharacteristic for her and more telling of her distress than anything else), her eyes bloodshot and puffy, the frown around her mouth so deep it seemed permanently etched there, and he knew it was no lie.

Finding himself without words, Nathan simply let his head droop and buried his face in the dark curtain of Hadara's hair, blinking hard to stave off tears of his own.

Zane responded to the devastation of his friends by doing what came most natural to him: pushing aside his own feelings in order to focus on the practicalities. He stayed close to the two of them, kneeling on the floor next to the couch, but his voice took on the soothing neutral tone he had perfected over the years of mediating arguments and lying to everyone he'd ever met aside from the four other aliens he'd come to earth with. "Hadara," he said and she looked up with bloodshot green eyes that stood out all the more against her toffee colored skin. Her eyes held fragility in them, but Zane knew he had to ask regardless. "How do you know?"

The tears began to trickle from her eyes again and Nate tugged her close again, her head resting on his bulky shoulder with her visage still turned towards Zane. "I—" she swallowed convulsively, "I heard him. He called to me telepathically. He…he sounded so scared, Zane, and…and angry."

A choked sob escaped her, but she muffled it in her own hand. Zane rubbed a hand soothingly up and down her arm. "And what did he say?" he asked carefully.

"Run," she replied and the word got tangled up in a sob, "He said to run. Then…I felt it, Zane. I felt it when he died. The power…it rippled right up the link. It hurt so bad. I can't imagine how he could have survived that." Then Hadara collapsed into hysterics again.

The three of them knelt there together on the floor, the dark-skinned girl cradled between the two young men for hours, letting their cumulative sense of tragedy drown them all. It wasn't until midnight that either of them moved and it was only a slight jump as the front door creaked open. The sound of keys being dropped on the table in the foyer was a precursor to a woman's voice calling out, "I'm home." There was the click-click-click of heels on the tiled entry from the knee-high boots she'd pulled on that day and then Rhia came into sight of the living room.

Her eyes widened slightly at the sight of her companions cradling each other on the living room floor and before she could stop herself she said, "Did I miss an invitation to a snuggle-fest?" There was a hint of dry humor in her voice as she stood there cocksure in a black wrap-around dress, her sophisticated look contrasting pleasantly with her long black hair, violently purple bangs, and the white streak that dangled down one side. Her humor drained away when Zane looked up and something in the stony look of his face had her straightening, arms dropping to her sides. "Zane?"

"Jiuro's dead," he finally replied, his voice as cool as his eyes.

Rhia's breath drew in a quick inhalation, but no words came out.

Zane narrowed his eyes at the late-comer and asked, "Where were you?" His teeth were clenched as he tried not to show his frustration with Rhia in front of everyone else, especially at a time like that.

She ran her tongue along her red-tinted lips a little uncertainly but her stance didn't waver. "Out," Rhia shrugged. When Zane raised his eyebrows suspiciously, she didn't flinch. Instead she turned the subject back to what was really important then. "How did Jiuro die? How do you know?"

"He sent Hadara a message. She felt it happen," Zane replied, easing his stiff body up off the carpeted floor. He began walking towards Rhia, not wanting Hadara to have to rehash the event again. She was torn up enough as it was. When he was near enough to whisper he leaned in close, covering the inches in height difference between them and stated, "He said to run. Then she felt the power backlash."

One curved black brow rose high as Rhia repeated, "Run?"

Drawing back slightly, Zane stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jeans and gave a succinct nod. "Yeah."

A sigh escaped Rhia before she could help it and her shoulders rounded in the smallest of slumps. "Then I guess we'd better get packing," she said, and Hadara and Nathan's heads both popped up from where they were resting against each other.

"Pack?" Hadara echoed numbly.

"Well…yeah," Rhia said as she shifted back and forth, "Obviously he warned us for a reason. It's time to move on, guys. Go to ground."

Zane caught her by the wrist as she turned to go upstairs and he leaned in close hissing, "How can you be so cold? We've just lost one of our own tonight. Can't you see that they're in no state to be doing this?"

Rhia's gray eyes calmly stared into Zane's, making an effort to tamp down on everything, anything she was feeling at that moment. Someone needed to be practical. Someone needed to keep them alive. Her eyes trailed down his face, taking in the high cheekbones and graceful angles, that sinful mouth and his stubborn chin, down his neck and shoulder to his well-muscled arm covered with a long-sleeved navy shirt, until they stopped pointedly on his hand where it gripped her wrist. Following the same path back up, she met his icy gaze with one of her own. "Get them up. Pack a bag. Take only what you need. I want to be out of here in four hours."

She rotated her wrist, pushing against the weak spot in his grip until his thumb gave way and she was able to slip out. Zane watched as Rhia put first one booted foot on the stairs, then the other. Pausing with her hand on the banister, she added, "Oh, and get the papers from the safe. We'll need new identities."

He was so stunned that he didn't say anything until she was nearly out of sight, about to disappear into the upstairs hall. "What about school? The house? Where are we going? We can't just disappear, Rhia!"

Without turning the dark haired girl replied, "That's exactly what we're going to do. Don't worry, Zane. I'll handle it. Just get the others ready to go."

There was a huge fire that night at the Williams house. Gas leak, they said. The whole thing went up in a great explosion of fire and glass.

No bodies were ever recovered, nothing except for some bone shards among the rubble.

It was a great tragedy in their community, an entire family of five obliterated in a freak accident.

Rhia got them a car, a brand new SUV that she took right off the lot without raising an alarm by using her powers. They stopped only once that night at the office where Jared Williams had worked and the four of them fanned out to cover the parking structure and watch each other's backs as they confirmed that Jiuro had been killed.

The pile of ash next to his car was proof enough of that.

After a brief exchange, Rhia took the car and followed the SUV out of town. They sank it in Lake Michigan, and then it was like the Williamses had never existed at all.

* * *

TBC…


	3. Chapter 2

On Bended Knee

Chapter Two

Fandom: Roswell

Pairing: See List

Rating: T

Warnings: Angst

Archive: Ask Me

Author: Lily Zen

Notes: This is based on the TV series Roswell, owned by the WB and UPN and whoever else holds the rights, but is almost entirely based on original characters. It operates under the premise that Tess never returned to Earth in Season Three with the baby. In fact, let's just go so far as to say that Season Three didn't happen except for Jesse and Isabel getting together. I like them. Oh, and I've decided to use the idea that was posed in S3 that after being brought back from the dead by Max, the ones he saved gained a modicum of his ability.

The reason I've decided to use this because Max's powers aren't really alien at all. In the series it's explained that when Max and the others were engineered, they were designed to be able to utilize a much larger portion of their brains. Basically, they are evolutionarily ahead of the rest of the human race. Theoretically, this could lead to psychic powers and a whole host of other science-fiction abilities i.e. healing, molecular tampering, telekinesis, etc. I think it makes sense if after being brought back from the dead by Max that those people would then be altered a little bit, and I like the idea of Liz and Kyle being able to defend themselves against all the alien weirdness. Damsels are so passé.

Pairing List:

Canon—Max/Liz, Isabel/Jesse, Michael/Maria, Past Max/Tess (all other past canon pairings apply up to the start of season three)

Non-Canon/OC—Zane/Rhia, Hadara/Kyle Valenti, Nathan/Ava (dupe)

There may be more and these are subject to change at any time. Writer's prerogative, you know.

Disclaimer: Not mine.

* * *

_Meanwhile…_

_Santa Fe, New Mexico_

It was the absence of warmth in the bed that woke her.

She stretched and sighed, and before she even opened her eyes and patted her hand on the sheets next to her, Liz knew exactly where he was. Her sleepy brown doe eyes blinked blearily at the ceiling and a moment later thirty-three year old Elizabeth 'Liz' Evans swung her feet out of bed and stuffed them into her slippers.

Dressed in her silk pajamas, the maroon camisole and shorts that Max loved to run his hands over and the fluffy bear-feet slippers that Michael and Maria had bought while they were at Yellowstone, she made her way down the hallway of their small adobe house to the kitchen.

Pausing at the sink, Liz quickly made up two mugs of instant hot cocoa, adding a generous amount of chili powder to her husband's. Then she stepped out through the sliding glass doors onto the patio where her dark-haired human-alien hybrid of a husband was sitting bare-chested in the moonlight staring up at the stars. Her eyes followed his gaze instinctively, finding the constellation Aries. She suppressed a sigh, knowing that it wasn't fair for her to get exasperated with him for this.

Though she loved him more than anything, had given up her childhood dreams of being a molecular biologist and becoming the department head at Harvard (really, that had been kind of a long-shot anyway; she was mature enough now to recognize that) so that she could be with him, Liz still sometimes caught herself wondering 'what if,' especially on nights like those when Max got all maudlin. She tried to be understanding, really, she did, but it had been almost seventeen years ago since Tess had left Earth with the granilith and Max's unborn son. There had been no word since. It was time to move on.

Liz wanted children; she wanted a family with him, with Max. She wanted to fill their house up with the pitter-patter of tiny feet and children's laughter—she didn't care if they had alien powers, and she felt it more and more with each passing year. Yet she never said a word. Not anymore. They'd been married for almost ten years; she'd stopped bringing it up after their sixth anniversary when Max had hedged and side-stepped and danced around the subject, distracting Liz until she realized in the middle of the night that Max had out-maneuvered her yet again.

He was too busy self-flagellating over the loss of his son to ever look at an infant and not think of the one he'd created with Tess.

It was killing her slowly but surely.

Somewhere deep inside, Liz drew up the reserve of strength that she'd been calling on more and more often over the years, summoning up a gentle smile for her husband as she cleared her throat.

Max started and turned. He was just as handsome as she remembered him at sixteen, though the hair at his temples was beginning to lighten with hints of silver and the lines of stress and laughter around his eyes had deepened. Returning her look with a wan smile, he held out his hand to her and she drew closer automatically, still as inexorably drawn into his orbit as ever. "Liz," he said her name, his voice husky and warm, and the sound of it still made her heart skip a beat.

He gently took the mugs from her and set them on the patio table, then used his hands to draw her down onto his lap. They sat chest to back with his arms wrapped around her, and Liz felt his warmth seep into her through the thin material of her pajamas. His flannel sleep pants were soft against her bare legs and she absently swished her feet back and forth, savoring the sensation. She felt Max chuckle against her and pressed his lips to the back of her neck where she always seemed to get that little knot of tension right next to her spine. Her hair was short enough now that he didn't need to brush it aside with his hands in order to reach her, cut in a soft, wispy bob more for practicality than style. When she rushed off to the high school in the morning, she didn't want to take more than fifteen minutes on her hair and make-up. After all, it wasn't like her students were interested in what Ms. Evans was wearing that day.

A soft sound escaped her as she felt the warmth of his lips and breath mingle with the sweet tingle and pulling of his power working at her, the tangled muscle releasing effortlessly under his ministrations. "Oh," she sighed as his tongue flicked the skin there, tasting her, and arousal licked at her belly, "Max." Her hands tightened on the arms of the chair involuntarily and she made a noise of disappointment when Max pulled away from her. In a futile effort to disguise the effect that Max still had on her after all that time, Liz asked, "Couldn't sleep?" She leaned forwards a little to pluck her cocoa off the table and took a large gulp.

She felt Max shrug nonchalantly. "Guess not."

"You should try, Max. You know how weird you get when you don't get enough sleep," she replied, keeping her voice quiet and neutral, "I made you some cocoa. Just the way you like it."

"I noticed," Max replied with the sound of a smile lurking in his tone, and he reached around her slender form to grasp the mug. "Thank you." When his arms were safely out of the way Liz turned so that she was sitting on his lap sideways, the arm of the patio chair digging into her back in a way that wouldn't be comfortable for very long. She smiled at her husband and ducked her head a little, amazed that he was still able to make her feel shy. "You're welcome," she said, and they drank their cocoa quietly while Max stared at the stars and used his free hand to rub soothing circles over his wife's back absentmindedly.

When they were done Liz stood up and offered a petite hand to her husband, which he accepted, and they returned to bed after leaving their mugs on the kitchen counter, Max spooning Liz. As she was about to drift off to sleep, she whispered, "I love you, Max. I know you miss him and you wonder about him, but please…don't forget that I'm here too."

Max was already asleep.

* * *

"Maria, you don't understand," Liz stated as she danced around the kitchen early the next morning, pouring cereal into a bowl as she waited for the timer on her dryer to go off. She was wearing her gray dress pants, black leather ankle boots, and a navy lace bra. Her shirt had been too wrinkled to wear, hence why it was tumbling in the dryer for fifteen minutes.

"I get it," Maria replied, her voice tinny and sounding far away, exuding from the cell phone that Liz had clipped to her pants, "He's got insomnia, so what? He's a brooding man haunted by his past, yakkity-yak. What's new?"

Sighing, the brunette schoolteacher said, "I don't know, Maria. It's just…it's different, okay? It's like he…he's closing himself off from me, shutting down a part of himself. He's _been_ doing that over the past few years. Now that all the alien weirdness is done and over with it's like he's got to find something new to be angst-ridden over, so he's fixating on this…this kid that he may or may not have, that he's never even seen before, living in another galaxy. He's just _not here_." Liz poured an adequate amount of milk over her cereal and added, "Do you know what I mean? Is Michael ever like that?"

Maria snorted rudely through her nose. "I _wish_ he was. Ever since he figured out I was pregnant he's been up my ass like you wouldn't believe. It's driving me insane, Liz." Her long-time friend groaned dramatically, "The other day he said that we should stop traveling for awhile, go back to Roswell so that my mom can help with the pregnancy. _Stop traveling_, Liz. I almost went into shock. You know he loves it even more than I do."

Liz laughed even as she suppressed a brutal stab of envy. Michael and Maria were blissfully, forever tempestuously in love with each other. The years had been kind to their relationship, or maybe it was their dynamic, rambunctious personalities that kept their spark ignited.

Her blonde friend had followed her passion and carved a career for herself in the music industry, and Michael, much to everyone's shock, had gone to art school. After he'd finished, Michael had decided to follow his girlfriend when she went on tour. Ostensibly, he'd done it to keep his artwork as fresh and motivated as possible, drawing inspiration from the places they traveled and the people they met, but everyone knew it was really so that he could keep an eye on Maria. He didn't handle the long periods of separation as well as he pretended to, but he would never have said anything about it lest his words hinder Maria's decisions regarding her career.

As Maria's music got more popular and she started booking bigger shows, she secretly set aside a portion of her income. Michael gained notoriety as well traveling with Maria. Her fans bought his artwork and he was able to get his name out in the public eye. The arrangement was mutually beneficial to them. For his twenty-sixth birthday, Maria bought him a gallery in Austin, Texas. She said it was because hauling his sculptures out on the road was a pain in the ass, but everybody knew it was because Maria was Michael's biggest supporter and she wanted him to have a place that was all his own. So he had his storefront and employees to manage it while they were traveling, and enough space in the back to set up a studio for his larger pieces.

They finally tied the knot five years ago on one of their trips back to Roswell. It was a spur of the moment decision that had wound up with them on the courthouse steps. Maria's mother, Amy, was there, and Isabel, Jesse, and their kids. Liz and Max had driven for four hours in the middle of the night and unceremoniously taken the next day off of work so that they could be there. Neither Michael nor Maria had ever truly regretted the decision to marry, not even when they were fighting like cats and dogs.

If there was one couple on the planet that Liz wished she and Max could emulate, it was Maria and Michael.

"So do you know what you're having yet?"

She heard Maria give her husky giggle, and then her friend drawled, "Well, I wanted to leave it a surprise, but Michael felt up my stomach one day and pulled some weird, alien voodoo out of nowhere. We're having twin girls."

"What?" Liz cried in between a large spoonful of cereal, "Oh my god, Maria!"

"I know! I'm totally freaked out, but totally excited at the same time. I mean, I'm terrified that they're going to come out and be miniature versions of Michael at his worst, or even worse, my mother at her flakiest, and there's really no way to tell if they're going to have powers or not. Isabel's first two kids didn't, but her third one did. Plus, I'm going to be a _mom_. We're going to be _parents_. Someone out there is entrusting us, _me_ and _Michael Guerin_, with the rearing of children. Some part of me says that the powers that be are having a nice laugh at our expense."

Liz was laughing so hard that tears were starting to stream down her face. "Maria," she gasped, "Maria, stop."

Over the line, she could hear the musician chuckling as well.

"I'm so happy for you," Liz said when she'd sobered enough to speak.

"Yeah," Maria sighed, "Me too. Michael's going to be a really great dad. I know he's freaked out, even more than I am, but god, I couldn't imagine anyone else I'd want to do this with."

"Aww," Liz cooed into her empty kitchen, "That is the sweetest thing I've ever heard you say."

"Yeah, well, it's true," Maria grumped, "If I'm going down, I'm taking him with me."

The two women laughed and Liz felt at home, safe, even though Maria was hundreds of miles away in London at the moment.

"So back to this Max issue," her friend interrupted, and Liz cringed inwardly. She really had nothing new to say, it was the same old crap over and over again. Really, she almost felt bad for forcing Maria to listen to her bitching yet again.

Still, that didn't stop her from venting. "I don't know what to do, Maria. I'm worried that he's bored with our life or falling out of love with me, and he's using this obsession with his son as a way to push me out. I mean, I'm not getting any younger. I want kids, Ria. I want a family. I want…god, I can't believe I'm saying this…I want what you and Michael have. You're each other's home. When the two of you look at each other, it's like there's this whole other universe and no one else can see it except you guys, and now you're widening that circle to include your kids." Liz paused as she felt the now-familiar tingle of her meager ability, the one she'd gained from Max's healing the day she'd been shot and killed in the Crashdown Café. She quickly shook her left hand to dispel the crackling tension and relaxed into the deep breathing technique that Kyle had taught her.

A moment later she continued. "That, to me, is like the ultimate expression of love: your DNA mingling together to create this brand new person; half your chromosomes, half his."

Liz gave a wistful sigh as she set her empty cereal bowl in the sink and walked into the laundry room to grab her shirt from the dryer. As she was buttoning it up, Maria finally responded.

"You know, Liz, I used to be jealous of you and Max. Downright green with it when we were kids," she paused, seeming to give her wording careful thought, "You and Max had that whole one-true-love, you're-my-soulmate, Romeo and Juliet thing going on. The two of you looked at each other like you were the only people on the planet. I was so jealous of that. I never looked at Michael that way. I never had that moment when I looked at him and said to myself 'he's the only one for me.' I mean, I do now, but that's because I know him now, inside and out. Sometimes I think I know him better than I know myself. But back then? No way. I was sure that Michael and I were going to go out in a blaze of teenage glory, and that you and Max were the real deal.

"I've given it some serious thought," Maria continued on, "And I think that I was lucky. You fell hard and fast for Max. He was your first love and that's a powerful, heady thing, but first love fades, Liz. That rush of hormones tapers off and suddenly you're coming back down to earth just as hard and fast as you fell in love. Plus, add to that the fact that Max literally brought you back from death's door. That in and of itself raises a whole other host of feelings, things that you might confuse for love or give your affections a different flavor. There was a desperation to your relationship when we were young, Liz, an allure of the forbidden. But those are all things that go away with time."

"So what are you saying? That we're not in love anymore?" Liz frowned as she smoothed her navy blouse into place, pushing down the tumult of emotions the thought raised up and with it her power, and slicked on a coat of lip gloss without looking in a mirror. She grabbed her briefcase and headed out the side door to the garage.

"No, no," Maria backpedaled, "That's not it at all. I'm saying that maybe the honeymoon effect is over, maybe those overly-charged feelings you had as kids are gone, but something else has taken its place. Something warm and solid and real. True love. You just have to find it, because this love is the love that lasts if you take care of it. Max isn't taking care of it. You need to show him how."

Liz got in her car and closed the door, hitting the button on the remote to raise the door. She was going to be late if she didn't hang up the phone, and as much as she appreciated Maria's advice, the blonde woman being one of the few human women in on the secret, she was also getting a little agitated. True, she'd asked for the advice, but Liz didn't really like what she was hearing. Not that it was Maria's fault or anything. Just because they were friends didn't mean that Liz expected Maria to mindlessly agree with her, and maybe part of her felt that Maria was right in a lot of what she was saying. If she was honest with herself, that was probably what was bothering Liz the most. It was a lot to think about. "I have to go, Maria. I love you. Thanks for the talk."

"You're welcome, sweetie. Call me any time. Bye."

"Bye," she said and hit the button on the phone to end the call. Then Liz backed out of the driveway and prepared for another day of teaching high school science.

* * *

_Six Months Later_

_Seattle, Washington_

Ava looked up maybe a little too eagerly as the bell over the shop door rang. Her eyes felt strained from sitting there with a calculator and a pile of receipts, working on the books for the last two hours. She really needed to learn how to schedule her time better, work on the books a little bit once a week rather than waiting until the last minute and binging. It was just hard though. She loved her store, loved ordering and advertising, organizing, and talking with her customers. Ava would much rather re-do her window displays than sit at her desk and plug numbers.

So when two teenagers walked through the door and started poking around, she was more than enthusiastic about setting down her work and springing up from her chair.

"Hi!" Ava chirped, "Welcome to Fourth Circle Designs. I'm Ava. Can I help you find anything?" She smiled her best, most customer-pleasing smile and went to step out from behind the glass display cases. As she was walking, she looked up at the two teens, one girl and one boy, and faltered, catching the toe of her platform peep-toe heel on the lip of the floor. Her hand slammed onto the display case to catch herself in time before she could really make a mess of herself by sprawling on the floor, but she didn't notice. Her eyes were focused entirely on the young man in her shop, mouth agape.

It had been years since she'd walked away from Lonnie and Rath, years since she'd left Roswell and the other set of clones behind her and tried to find her own way in the world. A path free from the smell of the subway and the sound of a body being flattened under the wheels of a truck. It was a long, hard journey.

Her whole existence, Ava had defined herself by her role in the group, her relationships with Zan, Rath, and Lonnie, and who she had been in her previous incarnation. To suddenly be without that had been terrifying and thrilling all at once. The possibilities had been endless and for awhile she simply hadn't known what to do with them. Ava had never known who she really was outside of her makeshift family. It took wandering through the Southwest up to Reno, where she worked as a cocktail waitress, to San Francisco, where she flipped burgers and waited tables, to Montana, where she worked on a horse farm, and Seattle, where Ava settled down and went to school, for her to discover the person that lurked within.

She'd gotten an associates degree in business and then another degree a few years later in fashion design, and she'd scrimped and saved and borrowed money from the bank to open up her own store. Her life in Seattle was so far away from anything alien and she was more than a little proud that she'd done it all on her own.

Her only acknowledgment of her past was the name of her shop, Fourth Circle. Ava had long since removed the crudely inked tattoo on her arm of the four interconnected circles that were meant to represent herself, Zan, Lonnie, and Rath. After all, she was a business owner, a human business owner, and she needed to be taken seriously by people, not draw attention to herself with strange symbols on her skin. Still, she'd wanted to acknowledge that part of her life, those strange years that had formed the basis of who she was now. She had wanted to pay homage to her heritage, even though no one would ever know what it meant aside from herself.

"Zan…?" she breathed in a tremulous voice, her eyes locked on the shadowed profile of the boy who'd walked in the store. He was bent over a table display of t-shirts that Ava had designed and silk-screened herself, his dark brown hair longer than she remembered ever seeing it, shorter in the front and layered, waving at the ends so that as he was bent over it obscured his face. But that was Zan's nose, she was sure of it, and his build was exactly the same if not the clothes. Tears pricked the corners of her eyes as the boy turned.

He blinked his blue, blue eyes at her and a crushing wave of disappointment hit Ava. "What?" the boy asked.

It was apparent at that juncture that it wasn't Zan.

Zan was dead, she knew that. Ava had watched him die, was still haunted by his murder; would probably always be haunted by his murder.

This boy had a slightly softer turn to his jaw, his mouth was fuller, and of course there were the eyes. That was a dead giveaway.

"I'm sorry," Ava finally choked out, shaking her head sheepishly, "You reminded me of someone I knew." Smoothing her hands down her black pencil skirt nervously, she said, "What can I do for you?"

The young man grinned and something in the expression, in the way his Cupid's bow lips curved upward and revealed his white teeth was so familiar. "Just looking," he told her, his voice low and husky, reminding Ava once more of her dead lover, and he jerked his chin, eyes focused some place behind her, "My friend might need some help though."

"Oh!" Ava turned on her heels, scolding herself for having forgotten the other person that came in with him.

The girl was standing at a clothing rack, eyes carefully following Ava's every move. Again, the blonde woman was struck with the sense of déjà vu, as though she knew this girl. Except Ava had never seen her before, she was positive. She was pale-skinned and raven-haired, except for her long violet bangs and a white streak off to one side. As Ava drew closer she noticed the girl's eyes were gray, true gray, which was an unusual color in humans. She was tall—taller than Ava, anyway—and slender, but something in her stance told Ava she could take care of herself.

Ava smiled. "Hi, there! Like I said, my name is Ava. Is there anything I can help you with?"

"Rhia," she said and held out her hand. Ava reached out to return the gesture automatically, linking her hand with the other's, and found herself sucked into a different world.

There were vague flashes, impressions of things—the three moons present on Antar, a delicate woman's hand in her own, warmth, jealousy, exasperation, affection—and then Ava was back in her little shop on Earth, gasping, ripping her hand away from the young woman. Her blue eyes were wide; frantic as they took in the girl and the next thing that escaped her was an incredulous, "Rhialla?"

* * *

TBC…


	4. Chapter 3

On Bended Knee

Chapter Three

Fandom: Roswell

Pairing: See List

Rating: T

Warnings: Unknown

Archive: Ask Me

Author: Lily Zen

Notes: This is based on the TV series Roswell, owned by the WB and UPN and whoever else holds the rights, but is almost entirely based on original characters. It operates under the premise that Tess never returned to Earth in Season Three with the baby. In fact, let's just go so far as to say that Season Three didn't happen except for Jesse and Isabel getting together. I like them.

Pairing List:

Canon—Max/Liz, Isabel/Jesse, Michael/Maria, Past Max/Tess (all other past canon pairings apply up to the start of season three)

Non-Canon/OC—Zane/Rhia, Hadara/Kyle Valenti, Nathan/Ava (dupe)

There may be more and these are subject to change at any time. Writer's prerogative, you know.

Disclaimer: Not mine.

* * *

They hadn't intended to go on a shopping trip when they left the apartment.

After their escape from Chicago, Rhia, Zane, Nathan, and Hadara had driven for a long time, heading west because…hey, why not?

Eventually they had made it to Seattle and found a cheap two-bedroom apartment that they were all working pretty hard to maintain. Nate was working at a gym as a personal trainer and Hadara had gotten a job at a bank. They had taken a vote and it was decided that Zane and Rhia were going to finish high school in Seattle under their new identities, and while Rhia hadn't been happy about it she'd finally capitulated when Nathan took her aside and patiently explained that someone needed to keep an eye on Zane. It was blatant manipulation, using her dedication to her role as one of Zane's guardians to get her to go back to school. Besides, she had a bit of a soft spot for when Nathan got all riled up about something. It happened so seldom otherwise. Not that she'd ever tell her taciturn friend that. He might start using his passionate beliefs to sway Rhia to his way of thinking more often.

Rhia and school had never really agreed with each other, not because she wasn't smart enough but because she got bored easily and didn't see much point to filling her head with information that ultimately wouldn't be of any use to her. After all, her path in life was already set: she was Zane's guardian. Her job was to protect him and get him back to Antar safely so that the throne could be restored to the rightful king. Microeconomics didn't really come into play there.

But there she was, back in high school and hating every moment of it, and after eight hours of that special form of torment she went to the porn store that she'd been able to pick up part time hours at. Sure, it was kind of skeezey, dusting off the plastic covers of sex toys and loaning out movies to all sorts of pervs, but Rhia didn't mind as much as Nate thought she should. It got her out of the house and got some decent money in their pockets, gave her a chance to talk with people she didn't have to see every day.

Zane had gotten a part-time job at a hotel in the maintenance department. Not that he actually knew how to fix a heater. The cheating bastard just used his powers for that. He was trying to keep low-key at their new school so that if they had to disappear again rather abruptly there wouldn't be too many people asking questions. She knew it went against his people-friendly nature but she appreciated the effort. It was easier to make sure he stayed safe if she didn't have to investigate each and every person he became acquainted with and left her with more time to focus on other things. Like the solving of Jiuro's murder.

They couldn't work all the time though and with the four of them living in a cramped apartment, things tended to get a little tense. Rhia and Hadara shared a room, and argued almost constantly now about Rhia's chaotic organization, late hours, and flippant attitude.

Zane and Nathan shared a room a little easier than the women did; both of them having more easy-going personalities, but there were still certain things that caused trouble between them…like not being able to masturbate. Zane was quickly learning to be a jack-off ninja living in such close quarters with three other people, two of whom were not-unattractive females.

Aside from that, it was difficult to find any place to be alone. It seemed like the second you turned around, you were tripping over somebody. Zane knew he needed to get out of the house when he and Nathan started arguing over a chair that somebody hadn't pushed in at the kitchen table, which he'd then tripped over, and Rhia had jumped at the chance to be anywhere but there. They took the car downtown and parked it in a public lot, walking until they'd stumbled on the little shop that had caught Rhia's eye.

She liked the clothes in the window display. They had the sophisticated punk look that she seemed to lean toward, if such a thing was possible, and so after not nearly enough wheedling done on her part the two of them had drifted inside. Zane didn't examine why he could never seem to say no to Rhia, especially when she gave him that pleading look from underneath half-lowered lashes, her lips taking on a subtle pout.

When the blond haired woman stood up from behind the sales counter and called him 'Zan,' Zane dismissed it as a figment of his imagination. Nobody called him that anymore. Zan wasn't a name that fit into human culture easily, so he'd adopted the name Zane as his moniker and over time made it his own. It felt more natural to his ear than 'Zan' ever had. Zan was his father's name, Zan was his grandfather's name; it wasn't his. Then she'd touched Rhia and stumbled back like she'd been burned, whispering Rhia's full name like it was natural to her.

Rhia cocked her head to the side, studying the woman with her intense gaze. "Do I know you?" she finally responded.

The blonde shopkeeper gasped and pressed her hand to her heart like she was trying to convince her pulse to slow down. "It's…it's me, it's Ava."

With narrowed eyes and a skeptical voice, Rhia replied, "That's not possible." She was taking carefully measured sidesteps, putting her body between Zane and the shopkeeper, quiet despite her knee-high combat boots. Her arms were loose at her sides and Zane recognized her deceptively casual stance as being the calm before the storm. Literally. "That bitch is back on Antar, marking the days in Khivar's prison." The air began to feel heavy with the charging of particles and Zane watched Rhia's hands with careful eyes. Once those graceful hands started to rise, Ava could kiss her own ass goodbye.

"What?" Ava's eyebrows drew downward as she shook her head in confusion. "What are you talking about? Are you sure you're not talking about Tess?"

At that, Zane's face cleared with recognition and he called to Rhia, "Rhia, it's okay. She's right. Remember, my mother called herself Tess? This must be her twin." He placed a cautious hand on the girl's arm over her short leather riding jacket, and Rhia froze in place, processing his words. Her posture relaxed when she realized he must be right. Spine drooping slightly, she shoved a hand in her back jean pocket and smiled at the tiny blond woman. "Sorry about that," she shrugged, "Can't be too careful." The heaviness in the air dissipated.

Ava waved her hands in dismissal. "Don't worry about it. I understand," she demurred and offered the kids a small smile of understanding. Then she looked them both up and down slowly. "You're Rhialla, I know that, but I don't quite know how I know you. Who's he?" Her eyes flicked over to Zane with a question in them.

Rhia swallowed and hesitated to say anything. Before she could make a decision Zane stepped out from behind her and offered his hand to Ava. "I'm Zane," he said with a smile like melted butter, "Tess' son."

Ava's eyebrows disappeared into her large, loopy curls and side-swept bangs as she examined Zane anew, picking out all the features she could identify as her own. "And Max's?" she found herself asking, though she already had a feeling she knew what she'd hear.

The young man smiled slightly and nodded. "So they tell me," he chuckled.

"Wow," Ava breathed and leaned back against the jewelry display case, "So you're the crown prince, hey?" Zane's cheeks took on the slightest hint of a flush as he nodded his head in acknowledgment. "That's crazy. So, uh, how is Max? We met once, you know. He seemed like a real good guy."

Sensing that the danger had passed and that she wasn't really necessary for this conversation, Rhia wandered off and started browsing through the women's clothing racks again, though she kept a surreptitious eye on Zane and Ava. Neither of them was any wiser to her subtle espionage. To them she appeared completely intent on what she was doing.

"Really?" Zane replied to Ava, "You met my father?"

Ava shook her head and smiled a little bemusedly. "Yes. You mean to say that you haven't?"

"No," the prince admitted with a soft laugh. He ran his hand through his hair in a nervous gesture.

"Well, why not? How long have you been planetside?"

Rhialla let the cadence of their voices wash over her, their words becoming indistinct, a pattern of sounds and pauses, music in its most primitive form. If she needed to, she'd be able to recall what they said, but she wasn't an eavesdropper, not when it came to innocuous subjects. Not when it came to such personal matters, such a tender ache in Zane's soul. It bothered him that he'd never known his father, that even though he'd been on the same planet as him for pretty much his entire life, he'd never laid eyes on the man who sired him.

Jiuro had never taken them to the reborn king. She'd never questioned why to his face, affecting blind loyalty and obedience in that one thing as though it would make up for all her other deviances. Rhia knew he was supposed to. That had been the plan anyway when he'd launched a ship towards the earth full of infant hybrids. Though to be honest, the girl who most resembled chiaroscuro wasn't all that disappointed. Jiuro had told her tales from the time she had breached her false womb about his one encounter with the hybrid ex-queen, Tess, and her deviousness, how she had betrayed the rest of the royals for a chance to grovel at Khivar's feet. Rhia had thought that if Tess was so weakened by her human side then she didn't particularly wish to see what had become of her own brother and not to mention their beloved king. (Frankly, she wasn't eager at all to see Vilondra. Rhialla still held a grudge for that whole 'betraying your entire planet, not to mention family just for a little nookie' thing.)

She remembered Queen Ava as she had been of the past. Her memories of life on Antar were sharper than most: Hadara remembered only vivid snapshots, nothing chronologically ordered; Nate only had the vaguest impression of things; scents, tastes, texture, emotions. However, Jiuro had used to sit with them all and tell them stories of the things they had survived. Somewhere along the way those had begun to trigger a flood of information from some vault in Rhia's mind, though sometimes she felt that half of those were images she'd created from the stories their caretaker recited.

Queen Ava had always held mixed feelings for Rhialla. She was not privy to the knowledge of Rhia's true status within the court, her significant station as the King's Spymaster. The beautiful queen only knew Rhialla as one of her courtiers and Rath's younger sister. She found Rhia to be amusing despite her somewhat roguish behaviors and often when the Queen organized entertainments the young courtier was always among the first to be invited.

However, Queen Ava grew suspicious of Rhialla's relationship with her husband. It was noted that they were seen together often. Usually Rath accompanied them on pleasant little outings that the queen was never invited to. Granted, they never met in private—always public places, though isolated from the rest of the crowd among them—that would have been like waving a red flag. As it was, people talked. There were rumors that Zan was having a dalliance with the young courtier and that his trusted second, Rath, was covering for them. Odd since Rhialla was Rath's sister: the instinctive protectiveness of brother over sister should have made the task a deplorable one, if not impossible. Rath wasn't the kind of man who would step aside easily to offer up his sibling, not even to his king and closest friend, not without generating some serious friction between them. Except everything between Rath and Zan remained completely normal, making Queen Ava shelve the rumors to the back of her mind for the time being.

With Rath acting as chaperone with the king and the courtier, there was technically nothing at all wrong with what they were doing. Perhaps their friendship was a little inappropriate as the queen was not often present for these friendly activities and the king was most definitely a married man. When Ava had approached Zan about it, he said that they did not ask her along because they were often participating in hobbies that the Queen found distasteful: men's sports, such as coursing game and going to the races, not to mention gaming competitions down at the gentlemen's club (Rhialla was one of three noblewomen whose expertise at the strategy game, Blade's Edge [similar to a combination of Earth's chess and pai sho], had earned her an invitation to the male-only club). Only slightly mollified by this answer, the Queen had settled in with a watchful eye. Never had Rhialla shown any sign of inappropriate interest in the King, not in her presence or any other's, but she could not disregard the secret meetings.

Sometimes Rhialla would accidentally bump into Zan in the palace corridors and, being a proper gentleman, he would escort her to her intended destination, speaking in hushed tones. She made him laugh, her oh-so-serious husband, with whatever words they exchanged, and the knowledge made Ava's stomach turn with jealousy.

Queen Ava hadn't known what it all meant, but she'd had her suspicions that an affair was skillfully being conducted right under her own nose. It made her hate and love the younger woman in equal amounts. Hate because Ava had never shared well; love because, well, if she was going to have an opponent, it had best be one with considerable skill. Beside, she could not shake the feeling that she was missing a significant piece of the puzzle and Rhialla was still wonderfully charming, still one of Queen Ava's favorites despite the fact that the younger woman might be fucking her husband. Mistresses were not uncommon among the upper class—they weren't uncommon among the lower classes either, but for the fact that most craftsmen couldn't afford to keep one—and affairs tended to be rather commonplace in a world where arranged marriages were the norm.

Then the revolution had occurred and the unraveling of the mystery had been cut short by Ava's untimely death. Sad because Rhialla remembered enjoying the game she'd played with the queen. The woman would have been a hell of a Blade player had she taken the time to learn the game. She had the patience for it and an analytical mind to boot.

"Rhialla?" The sound of her name, her proper name, drew the young woman out of her self-imposed state of deafness. Her gray eyes flicked up and landed on the shopkeeper's blue ones. There was a question in them and maybe a hint of amusement. It took a moment longer, following Ava's gaze with her own to see her focused on Rhia's hands which clutched absently at the sleeve of a pinstripe jacket, rubbing the material between her thumb and index finger. Strangely embarrassed, she dropped the jacket like it was a hot poker and took a deliberate step back. Rhia didn't need to see the price tag to know that she couldn't afford it—it was there in the texture of the fabric, the quality of the construction, and in the single digit dollar amount that had printed out on her last ATM receipt.

"Yes?" she replied coolly in order to distract herself.

Ava smiled at her and Rhia couldn't help but smile back. There was something about the look on her face, that kicked-puppy look in her eyes mingling with the confident posture that made her want to put forth the effort to be a little nicer. Maybe it was just the novelty of meeting someone like herself, someone who hadn't lived with her during the course of that lifetime. "I was just wondering how it is we, um, knew each other," Ava began hesitantly, stepping forwards and seeming to absentmindedly pluck the jacket that Rhia had been eyeing from the padded hanger.

She undid the button as Rhia shrugged and told the blonde haired woman, "I was a member of the court and Rath's younger sister. We were casual friends, not particularly close, but there was affection between us."

"Wow," Ava said and looked up in surprise, turning the jacket and holding it out in her hands, "Your memory recall is excellent." Rhia shrugged and looked at the older woman curiously. She grinned widely and shook the fabric gently. "Try it on," Ava told her, "You'd look great in it, I bet."

"No, I couldn't," Rhia demurred and held her hands up in front of her, palms out, as if to ward off the attention. She already knew she couldn't buy it, so why tempt herself further? Granted, she could have used her ability to obtain it. She wasn't a mind-warper like Ava—her gifts tended to lie toward more physical aspects—but she had the basic ability to manipulate molecular structures. Rhia could have taken a plain piece of paper and turned it into a hundred dollar bill if she'd wanted to, and maybe she would have if the shop owner had been anyone except one of her own kind. That made it feel wrong somehow.

Zane was watching the exchange curiously, his eyes bouncing back and forth between them, until he piped up with a small smile, "Come on, Rhia. It won't hurt to try it on."

"Exactly," Ava smiled winningly, "Won't hurt a bit. Slip your coat off."

Looking between the two of them, Rhia exhaled soundlessly and shrugged off her leather jacket. Zane held out his hand obligingly and took it from her, leaving her in nothing but a black stretch cami with her red bra straps showing. They'd left the apartment in such a hurry that she hadn't even stopped to find a shirt. Hadara was in a foul mood, holed up in their shared room, and Rhia hadn't felt like taking her life in her hands just to grab a t-shirt. She turned and slipped her toned arms through the full length sleeves, and Ava gracefully settled the jacket up on her shoulders.

"There we go," the blonde woman said almost to herself, "Turn around." The designer gave Rhia a long look of appraisal and laughed delightedly. "God, you've got a great figure. You're almost more perfect than my dress mannequin. Take a look." She stepped aside in those five inch heels and waved at one of the interesting gilt-framed mirrors that dotted the small shop.

Rhia glanced in the mirror, saw a young woman whose artistically put together visage contrasted with the cold, aged look in her eyes, but she knew that wasn't what she was supposed to be focusing on. Her eyes drifted to the corner of the mirror where she could see Zane looking at her. Something about his blue eyes trained on her with laser focus made her breath catch in her throat, the shrewd understanding that lingered there warming the cockles of her carefully guarded heart. He knew she couldn't afford the jacket and though her expression was being carefully controlled to not give anything away, he clearly realized just how badly she wanted it. Only after she watched him inspecting her did she turn her focus in the mirror to the pinstripe jacket. It fit like a glove, the solitary white button fitting snug under her breasts, making her meager offering look more plentiful than it actually was. Her body was too lithe, too fit to support anything larger than her b-cup.

Logically, she knew that wasn't all that small—there were plenty of women flatter than she—but the human mind was funny like that. Every time she stood next to the lush, pneumatic Hadara a strange feeling of insecurity overtook her.

The bold, white trim, mimicked on the bottom of the cuffs and the button plackets, on the pinstriped collar drew attention to the deep vee of the jacket, drawing further attention to her breasts, offered up and on display like some sort of power-suited board room shark, and nipping in at her waist. The jacket required a white fedora, she decided, and could easily see herself with a hat jauntily perched on her head. It had been a long time since she'd indulged herself so frivolously. Her money went almost entirely to the collective pot they used to pay the rent and utilities, and what little didn't was often spent on food.

Zane's eyes studied her and Rhia started as she realized they were using the mirror to lock eyes once more, and the liquid warmth in his gaze spread to her belly in a flash of heat. His look said he didn't find her inadequate at all and the top row of her teeth sank into her lower lip. She wasn't sure of the implications behind that look. Zane wasn't just some guy in a bar giving her eyes across the room. She couldn't follow her gut instinct and press him up against the display table, crowd his lips with hers.

Desire was a simple thing, but desire for Zane couldn't be indulged in. He was the prince. She was his bodyguard. There could be no attachment beyond that and she wasn't so naïve as to think that she could seduce him without ill effect to her own heart. Even Rhia wasn't impervious to that.

Thankfully, Ava spoke then, bringing Rhia crashing back down into reality with a hard thump, her mind automatically locking away her thoughts. "Amazing!" she clapped her hands together, bouncing in place twice, "You look so great in that. Oh, you've just got to have it, Rhialla. One thing though…" The other woman hesitated then touched the sleeve of the jacket with her index finger and they all watched as the sleeves shortened themselves a bit. "Cropped is cuter." Ava's smile was mischievously happy.

"Rhia," the girl corrected absently as she swiftly undid the button, though she had admired the change and that little demonstration of power, and slipped the jacket off, handing it to the seamstress, "And I can't. Love to, but can't." Her smile was genuinely regretful.

However, having anticipated such a reaction, Ava merely shook her head and shoved the young woman's hands back at her. "No, no, I insist," she smiled, "Just take it. Consider it a gift from one hybrid to another. Besides, I don't think I could handle seeing it on someone else now."

"I can't do that," Rhia shot back and offered up the jacket again.

Quickly seeing where this was going, Zane cleared his throat and stepped up, clasping Rhia on her bare shoulder. He was trying not to think about that, to process and catalog the way her skin felt under his hand, to not lose his train of thought. "Accept the gift, Rhia," he said, "Or I'll be forced to undermine your independence by purchasing it myself and sneaking it into your closet when you're at work." He shot her a wry smile, a sparkle of amusement entering his eyes when Rhia glared at him, her lips pursed as she measured his level of seriousness. Zane was good. He knew just what was going to prick Rhia's pride even more than a freebie from a near-stranger: a freebie from a friend.

She stuck her pierced tongue out at him, the silver barbell winking in the light, and he almost responded in kind before he caught himself. Then Rhia deflated and turned to Ava with a grateful smile. "Thank you," she stated, and sketched a movement that was somewhere between a curtsy and a punctilious bow thoughtlessly.

The blonde haired hybrid let loose a wide grin and delighted, loud-mouthed laugh that she tried to smother with her hand. "You're welcome," she replied when she'd sobered and tugged Rhia into a spontaneous embrace. The dark haired woman was so stunned she didn't know what to do at first, her arms caught up awkwardly against the other woman. "Just promise you'll come back. It's been a long time since I've been with my own kind," Ava admitted as she pulled away from Rhia, "I'd love it if you'd both visit again." A light flush arced across the older woman's cheeks as she admitted to her loneliness.

"Sure," Zane responded, "We'd love to. Is it okay if we bring some friends?"

"Other hybrids?" Ava cocked her head to the side.

He nodded. "Yes."

Again, the little blonde bounced in place, not hindered at all by her incredibly high shoes. "Of course!" At that, Ava snatched up the jacket she'd given Rhia and flew behind the counter, wrapping it up in one of the translucent bags she'd ordered, the nice ones with the slightly more solid scroll work on the front, and the labels Ava had designed and stuck on herself, after she placed the loosely folded jacket in white tissue paper. She handed the bundle over to Rhia, who took the ribbon handles with trepidation.

"Thanks," she said again with a smile that Ava found to be charmingly shy.

She watched the two young hybrids leave the store; proprietarily observing the way Zane held the door open for Rhia and guided her out with a hand on her leather jacket right over the small of her back. Absently, she wondered how long it was going to take them to figure out that their relationship was shifting, their feelings for one another going through a state of transformation, and how that little drama would play out. Mostly she was interested in when they'd be coming back and who they'd be bringing with them. It had been so long since she had been able to really let people in, let them know who she was. Not since Lonnie and Rath, though that was probably a terrible example of friendship and unity.

* * *

TBC…


End file.
